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Kenya mall attack: Canadian recounts how she survived the terrifying attack: ‘Every step I took I thought … would be my last’

Joanne Ball-Burgess, from Saint John, N.B., describes her ordeal inside Nairobi’s besieged Westgate mall, where 62 people are dead, including two Canadians.

Scrawling her husband's phone number on the leg of her pants was all Joanne Ball-Burgess could do as she huddled in a bathroom with seven others in Nairobi's besieged Westgate Mall. (HANDOUT)

By Paul ClarkeStaff reporter

Mon., Sept. 23, 2013

Scrawling her husband’s phone number on the leg of her pants was all Joanne Ball-Burgess could do as she huddled in a bathroom with seven others in Nairobi’s besieged Westgate Mall.

“I was literally just walking out of the bathroom and in front of me there was all sorts of gunshots, lots and lots of gunshots, and people started running and screaming,” said Ball-Burgess, a native of Saint John, N.B.

“But it didn’t really sound like these guys were running out of bullets, so I started wondering if it was something much bigger.

“During that time everybody was tweeting and texting their family. One of the ladies that was with me, an Indian-Kenyan lady, her youngest son had told her by message that her oldest son had been shot in the head and he wasn’t waking up and so did her mother in-law.

“At that point she started freaking out and she basically said, ‘I don’t care I’m just going to walk out into the gun fire, what do I have to live for?’ I looked at her and said, ‘Do you have other family?’ she said yes. I said, ‘We all have to get out of here for the family that we have.’”

While in the bathroom stall, Ball-Burgess tweeted that there was shooting at the mall and she was hiding and pleaded for someone to call the police.

“I wasn’t sure if I was over-reacting. It sounds surreal, but I thought maybe at some point they would jump out and say ‘Ha ha, it’s a joke,’ but that never happened.”

After 3 1/2 hours they started smelling burning rubber and the bathroom started filling with smoke so the group unanimously decided that they had to leave even though they could still hear gunshots.

At a break in the shooting, they headed for a fire exit, but soon heard shots again so they hid in a nearby closet and turned off the lights.

Soon they were joined by five more people, who Ball-Burgess said were dripping with sweat and claimed to have seen people being shot.

“Some people had blood on them, others were crying and heaving and really freaking out.”

“We were scared, we didn’t know where the terrorists were — if they were at the exit. We had no idea where they were, so all of us eventually said, ‘Look, let’s try to get out of here and if we die trying then we’ll do that.’”

“I had written my husband’s phone number on my pant leg in case anything happened.”

After a few minutes the group decided to make a break for the fire exit, running with their hands in the air.

“At that point it felt like everything was moving in slow motion. I didn’t know if someone was going to shoot me in the back. . . . With every step I took I thought that it would be my last.”

“I could see the police and ambulances and the people 10 feet in front of me . . . By the time I got to them I just collapsed . . . .”

Outside the mall emergency services had already surrounded the building with helicopters hovering over head, she said.

She was quickly helped by local health care workers and directed to a help centre for uninjured people where she received tea and food.

Her husband at the time was with their two sons, 6 and 7, coaching soccer. She has lived in Nairobi for the past two years.

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